


Drumbot Merlin sings the blues

by TheWrongKindOfPC



Series: life! life! eternity! [4]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29725527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWrongKindOfPC/pseuds/TheWrongKindOfPC
Summary: The world is set up wrong — Brian has always known that.
Relationships: Drumbot Brian & Ashes O'Reilly, Drumbot Brian & Gunpowder Tim (The Mechanisms)
Series: life! life! eternity! [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2153655
Comments: 12
Kudos: 38





	Drumbot Merlin sings the blues

**Author's Note:**

> warning: Brief mention of off-screen animal death, worst-case-scenario intrusive thought patterns

Here are some things that Brian knows about feral cats:

1) That there are a lot of them, and that, when left unchecked, they can do a lot of damage to local bird populations which are already threatened by environmental and habitat change, industrial farming techniques, and pollution.  
2) That feral once-domestic cats are different enough from their ancestors that they’re not truly native to any habitat, and that everywhere they appear, their existence can pretty much be blamed on humans.  
3) That they have high incidences of disease, injury, and malnourishment, and tend to live much shorter and less healthy lives than their domestic counterparts.  
4) That interpreting item number three to be a sign that their lives are therefor not worth living is a sign of humanity’s overweening god complex and species chauvinism, rather than any kind of objective truth.

Here is what Tim appears to know about feral cats: that yesterday, the kittens in that abandoned lot were there with their mother, and today their mother is roadkill. As far as Brian can tell, what this means is that Tim is going to sit here in the dusty, empty stretch of scrub grass with a drug store can of tuna open in front of him all night if he has to.

“You can go,” he tells the rest of them, “And if you stay you’ve got to be quiet.”

Being quiet isn’t Jonny’s strong suit, so Brian isn’t surprised when he goes, and TS’s mother does care a certain amount about curfew, and kittens don’t really seem like Ashes’ thing, and Ivy doesn’t generally stay places where there isn’t any light after dark. Marius and Raph are already gone for the night, and Nastya has a shift in the morning, and one by one they all drift away, and Brian thinks that he should probably go with them.

It’s not like he knows Tim very well — it’s not like any of them do, as far as he can tell. And it’s not like he thinks he’ll be much help if Tim ever manages coax the kittens over. Brian’s aunt has a dachshund, but he doesn’t think that relationship has left him with any transferable skills in particular. He lingers a little longer, though, because there’s something interesting — something admirable, maybe, though Brian’s not quite sure about that part yet — about the decisive way Tim has parked himself, heedless and cross-legged, in this empty space as evening creeps in.

When Nastya heads out, and it’s only the two of them left, Brian takes a seat next to him and asks, “What are you going to do, if they do come out?”

Tim shrugs.

“There’s an animal shelter downtown,” Brian volunteers. “I’m pretty sure it’s a rescue shelter, they might take them.”

Tim shoots a sideways look in Brian’s direction. “I’m not taking them anywhere that might put them down.”

Brian considers pointing out that there’s a whole lot of certainty in his tone for someone who hasn’t seen the cats today, and might not find them at all, but he’s got no interest in picking a fight. He’s especially got no interest in picking a fight with Tim, who lashes out like he doesn’t care what it’s going to cost him. Brian says, “Sounds like you might have to keep them, then.” Life’s pretty uncertain once something leaves your hands.

…

The world is set up wrong — Brian has always known that. His first memory is riding on his father’s shoulders at a NO NUKES march. Nothing had come of it, the protest, and he’d known it by the fact that there always seemed to be another one — another protest, another petition, another demonstration. Brian doesn’t think that argues well for the usefulness of protests and petitions and demonstrations, but what else is there? Not protesting?

Ashes knows the world is wrong, too. Brian can tell from the moment he meets them. They’re glaring down the recess monitor, four-foot-nothing of cold fury, bullying their way into waiting in the hallway for class to start instead of freezing out on the playground. Brian isn’t big on kickball so he’s not enjoying the morning out in the early fall frost, either, and he trails Ashes out of the wind when they go.

Nearly six years later, here are some things Brian knows about Ashes O’Reilly:

1) They’ve got asthma.  
2) If they’d said they had asthma to the recess monitor way back then, they might have had an easier time arguing their way indoors, but  
3) They would never have done so because  
4) They don’t like to show weakness,  
5) They didn’t feel like they should have to, and  
6) Sometimes they just like to fight.

That’s the first thing Brian likes about Ashes, that they don’t sit back and let the wrongness of the world happen to them. They don’t always do much to try to set things right, either, but the fighting back feels important, to Brian, even when it’s not as purposeful as he might like.

…

They sit in the twilight and they don’t talk any more, and around them, the quiet, rustling, evening-sounds that go quiet when people are around start back up again. Brian feels something that’s probably an ant run over his hand, but he doesn’t startle or shake it off. He sits, and Tim sits, and the open can of tuna sits in front of them, and Brian thinks about how this is probably a useless plan, because if the kittens haven’t been weaned from their mother, there’s no reason they should recognize the smell of tuna as a sign of food. Unless there’s some kind of physical, instinctive memory that pings at the scent, but Brian doesn’t know how that could be, when there’s no way a domestic cat could catch a tuna in the wild — between the size-disparity and the depth of fishing required to catch tuna, the notion is absurd.

At Brian’s side, Tim breathes some more, like all of this is a normal way to spend a night of summer vacation. And in the gray-blue half-light, from the other side of the lot, a small shape starts to move closer.

Here are some things that could go wrong, if Brian lurches forward on his pins-and-needles legs to try to catch the tiny cats which are currently sniffing curiously at the open can: 

1) He could be too slow and make too much noise, sending the kittens skittering back off into the darkness without even getting close to them; on the whole, probably the most likely scenario.  
2) He could move at the same moment as Tim, who seems, at least if you take his confidence in his own actions as a sign, to have more of an idea than Brian of what to do, and they could collide, sending scenario number one into effect but with the added awfulness of messing up whatever it is Tim was planning on doing.  
3) In an effort to avoid enacting scenarios one and two, he could move too fast, grab too hard, and in the process break the kittens’ tiny, tiny bones.

On the other hand, not moving at all could mean missing the moment entirely, and — in Brian’s peripheral vision, he notices Tim stretching out a cautious hand in the kittens’ direction, slow and open, holding just a bit of the contents of the tuna can he’d apparently held back when he set out the rest. He turns to watch, wondering, as one of the kittens takes a step forward, little nose quivering with activity in Tim’s direction.

Without turning to look over at Brian, Tim murmurs a low-voiced, “Don’t move,” to him. It’s an almost dizzying relief. Brian sets his muscles into place, determined not to twitch as the first, bolder kitten takes another careful step forward in Tim’s direction.

…

Writing form protest letters for Amnesty International is one of the more useless-feeling things Brian voluntarily does with his time and also ropes his friends into doing on a semi-regular basis, but what’s the alternative?

“We could chain ourselves to a tree,” Ashes offers. “That’d be more fun, probably.”

“How would that help jailed political prisoners in Tunisia?” Brian asks, not because he’s expecting an answer that makes sense, but because he lives in hope that maybe — just maybe — one of these days he’ll be able to get Ashes to admit to caring a bit more than they want people to think. Brian knows they do see the wrongness in the world, and they do want it to be better, and he doesn’t know why they can’t just admit it out loud and in public sometimes.

“Well, it’d give them something to write about, wouldn’t it? You said these ones were journalists, didn’t you?”

“Last week was journalists,” the Toy Soldier volunteers as they add a border of daisies and curlicues around the edges of their protest letter. “These ones are political opposition.”

“Oh, and the journalists are so totally apolitical,” Ashes says, and Brian is not, he is not going to be dragged into another debate about the burden of objectivity of the fourth estate, they always manage to rope him into sounding a lot more idealistic about the press than he actually is, and he hates it. He’s seen that documentary about FOX — hell, he’s the reason Ashes has seen it, too, and he agrees with it, it isn’t fair to use it against him like this.

He says, “You can chain yourself to anything you want if that’s what you’re into, Ashes,” which maybe isn’t the most mature response, but does earn him a laugh from Jonny, whose protest letter seems to be devolving into creative death threats against members of the UN on the grounds of the uselessness of their response which will probably get him put on some kind of watchlist unless Brian manages to “lose” it on the way to the mailbox.

“Are you into trees, now, Ashes?” Jonny asks in that delighted tone that usually doesn’t mean he and Ashes are about to make out but had done so last Halloween, tipsy on purloined peppermint schnapps and smearing costume makeup all over each other’s faces around the fire in Ivy’s parents’ back yard.

“No fair,” TS breaks in again, “I thought I was going to be the wood nymph,” and Brian sees Ivy open her mouth to join in.

It’s a toss-up, he thinks, whether Ivy will dreamily promise the Toy Soldier that there are more than enough chances to be a wood nymph to go around, or whether she’ll be more in the mood to remind them all that mythological creatures are most likely metaphorical depictions of a pre-scientific society’s attempt to understand the natural world, but in either case, he thinks whatever she says will take them all down a tangent, so he takes the moment to gather up their letters for a post-office run.

…

Tim gives Brian one of the kittens to carry as they leave the lot that night. He takes it gingerly, folding deliberately gentle fingers around the body that feels so much smaller with all of the fluff of it flattened in his hands. The kitten’s body feels full of electricity in a way Brian hadn’t been expecting, like it’s vibrating with the desire to get away from him.

“Sorry, little guy,” he murmurs to it, trying for soft enough that Tim won’t hear him, but the quick, darting glance Tim sends in his direction says he's failed.

He lets Tim take the lead because that’s worked pretty well so far tonight, and it’s a block or two out when he realizes he doesn’t actually know where they’re going. “I’m pretty sure the shelter is probably closed for the night,” he says hesitantly, and Tim raises his eyebrows back.

“Thought we agreed that I might have to keep them,” he says, still in the same low, cautious voice he was using earlier.

“Well, yeah, I just meant, if you want to be sure they’ll be okay, there’s no way to really know once they’re not in your care anymore.”

“Yeah,” Tim agrees like Brian is saying something obvious instead of something that’s only really relevant as a tortured thought experiment.

“But you can’t just keep them — for a start, what are your parents going to say? You got suspended twice in the last month and a half of school, I doubt they’re lining up to get you a new pet.” Brian’s parents have occasionally showed a bit of grudging understanding when he’d really explained the necessity behind his trouble with the school administration, but he has the sense that, deep down, they really do wish they didn’t have to deal with it quite so often. More than that, from Brian’s limited understanding of Tim’s family, he gets the sense that they're a bit more pro-authority-structures than Brian’s own parents.

Here, though, Tim smiles a little, says, “Well, I got them for myself, saved them the trouble,” and then, “It’s kind of funny how you assume I’m going to tell them. Aren’t you the anarchist, out of all of them?”

Brian could explain that he admires anarchist idealists and the projects they tend to propose, especially in terms of localized community organizing and low-fi garage punk, but as a cohesive ideology he has a laundry list of concerns ranging from the practical to the philosophical. He could also point out the implausibility of keeping two brand-new and entirely unplanned-for pets a secret from parents Tim lives with. He could even point out that lying and anarchy aren’t really the same thing at all, and that really die-hard anarchists would probably be insulted by the association. Brian’s not, but he also isn’t an anarchist, so that doesn’t prove anything.

Instead, he says, “That’s debatable,” and draws the hands he has cupped around the kitten closer to his chest. Maybe it’s shivering because it’s cold, and not just because Brian is terrifying to it, after all. It’s a little egotistical of him to assume that the kitten’s reaction is because of him just because he’s the strange giant who’s taking it away from everything it’s ever known. Or maybe it’s insensitive not to assume that? 

…

When she’s a sophomore and he’s a junior, Raphaella asks Brian to homecoming.

“I know dances are, like, for squares,” she says, twitchily winding a strand of hair around her finger, “But I’ve never been to one, and it’s always best to make judgements based on first-hand experience, when feasible.”

She looks so nervous and hopeful as she does it that he doesn’t really think it through beyond wanting to giver her the answer that will take that hesitant look off her face, and he says yes. He’s a pushover, he reminds Ashes later, and that’s why he makes rash decisions and that’s why he will be, eventually, doomed.

“I don’t think anything as dire as all that is on the line,” Ashes hedges, but Ashes doesn’t think global warming is that dire, either, so Brian remains uncomforted.

“It completely wrecks groups, when people break up,” Brian reminds Ashes. He’s seen as many _Friends_ reruns as the next person who doesn’t have cable, but he knows better than to think it can go like that in real life.

“Woah, woah, woah,” and Brian is pretty sure Ashes is laughing at him, which is no help at all. “Don’t you think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself, there, big guy? Going to a dance together doesn’t even mean you’re going out for sure, never mind breaking up.”

“Well breaking up is inevitable, isn’t it? With the human lifespan extending indefinitely based on scientific advances, it’s just not feasible to think that any relationship can last a lifetime, the odds are just always lengthening against it.”

“That’s good, that’s romantic in a sciencey way, that’s exactly what you should say to Raph on your date,” Ashes says. Brian is mostly, but not entirely, sure that they’re teasing. He glares at them.

“No, really,” Ashes says, and some of the laughter clears from their tone. “Unless either you or Raph is really a dick to each other, nothing that happens on your date is going to make a single bit of difference to the rest of us, so you’ve got to stop thinking about it in terms of ‘good idea’ or bad idea.’” That doesn’t really sound like something that’s in Brian’s emotional range, but he appreciates their confidence, and he nods as they go on, “The only really big, important question here is whether you, Brian, want to go with her.”

And that — that’s horrifying because Brian is pretty sure that they’re right. He looks up at the sky instead of back at Ashes and says, “I don’t know.”

…

As they turn onto a much ritzier block than the more normal-looking ones they’ve been carrying the squirming kittens through, Brian considers whether Tim might be a contender for Brian and Ivy’s secret D&D project. At the moment, the project is nothing more than a messy hoard of notes passed back and forth in Latin (which is the only class Brian and Ivy have together without any of the others) where they bat character ideas and world-building notions back and forth and remind each other of all of the reasons why the rest of their friends aren’t quite the right people to start this game with.

Ashes would think it was silly unless they pitched it just right, and even if they did, Ashes still probably wouldn’t take it that seriously. If Ashes thought they were too cool to play, Jonny probably would, too. And if Jonny did play, Brian had a sneaking suspicion that he would be _very_ good at it. Which, theoretically, would be a good thing, except that if that’s going to happen, Brian wants to be confident enough in what he’s doing for it not to turn into the Jonny show. Nastya’s too cool, probably, TS can’t keep a secret from the others to save its life, and Marius and Raph — Marius and Raph would be alright, probably, only they’re definitely a matched set, and Marius seems like he’d be a bit of a milder version of the Jonny problem, and there’s Brian’s thing with Raph and _Ivy’s_ thing with Raph to consider, and those three issues feel like too much to invite into one tentative and very amateur D&D game.

Tim, though — Brian wouldn’t have thought he’d be the right fit, either, but Tim hasn’t acted much like Brian’s earlier assessment of him at all tonight, so it feels like a good time to reconsider. Yesterday, Brian would have said Tim was a barbarian, path of the berserker, no question. Tonight, though — maybe he’s a ranger, multi-class? The kitten Tim carries is asleep — Brian’s kitten has calmed down a bit, but it is definitely not asleep.

The house Tim slows to a stop in front of is a new build — kind of tacky, but in an ostentatious way. In the dark by the driveway, Tim says, “Hey, so — they’re going to need to see me come in the front door, or they’re going to freak out. But if I give you the key to the back door down to the basement, can you take them in that way?”

“Um—” this is all starting to sound a little too espionage for Brian to feel all that comfortable pulling off, but what’s the alternative? Letting Tim down? Letting down the kitten which has finally started to calm, curled gently against Brian’s body? “Yeah, yeah, I can do that, but you have to either unlock the door for me or help me figure out how to hold both of them in one hand, or I’m going to lose one on the way in.”

So Tim creeps to the back of the house with Brian, unlocks the door and pushes it open a crack, then says, “Wait maybe a minute before you head down? I should be at the front by then, and I can distract them so they don’t hear anything.”

Brian counts down from sixty — _fifty-nine-one-thousand, fifty-eight-one-thousand_ — and tries not to think about walking down the strange set of stairs in the dark when he gets to one. The kitten Tim carried over here hasn’t quite settled back to calm in Brian’s hands, and Brian isn’t normally a clumsy guy but a chance stumble or trip can happen to anyone, and he is a heavy-enough guy that if he falls on top of the kittens, he doesn’t want to think about what might happen, _twenty-six-one-thousand, twenty-five-one-thousand_ , he _doesn’t_ , he doesn’t want to think about sharp, brittle little bones under the skin and fur, _twenty-two-one-thousand, twenty-one-one-thousand_ , doesn’t want to think about how they could snap—

But the world Ivy and Brian have been planning out doesn’t have a lot of space for a ranger, they’ve been geeking out on city-scapes lately, _eighteen-one-thousand, seventeen-one-thousand_ , but maybe — the kitten yawns against Brian’s thumb — _nine-one-thousand, eight-one-thousand, seven_ — and Brian thinks he can hear the front door open but he doesn’t know and shouldn’t Tim have been there already by now, anyway? _Two-one-thousand, one_ , and then it’s time.

The basement is finished, it’s set up like a den, and it has its own bathroom, which is where Tim has Brian bring the kittens. He’s got a pillow under his arm — “I figure I’d better stay down here with them, the first night,” he explains, looking down at the striped blue pillow case tucked under his arm — and he laughs as he shows Brian the way to the bathroom where he and the kittens will apparently be sleeping.

“What’s so funny?” Brian does, actually, think the whole situation is a little ridiculous, but Tim’s not exactly a giggly guy, or he hasn’t been in the time Brian has known him so far.

“Oh, uh.” Tim looks a little thrown, like he wasn’t expecting Brian to want to be in on the joke. “Just — my sister used to sneak guys into her room, when she was home from college, and I always thought that was so messed up — like, how pointlessly rebellious do you have to be, that you’d risk getting caught like that? But I guess I’m technically doing the same thing.”

That — is kind of funny, Brian thinks, though there’s something underneath it that isn’t. Still, he smiles back, hefts the sleepier kitten in one hand, and says, “Well, the same thing with a couple of notable additions.”

…

It’s a joke, mostly, the thing about Brian being able to see the future. You make a few too many arguments about which of your friends is going to end up on The Wrong Side of History, and a handful of lucky guesses aided by some commonsensical reading of context clues to predict the dates of a few key pop quizzes, and before you know it, the superstitious malcontents you call friends are joking semi-seriously about your so-called psychic powers.

The Toy Soldier reads out everyone’s horoscopes most days at lunch, although by now, it’s assigned almost all of them a different star-sign than their birthday would indicate. “The day you were born the first time is so arbitrary,” it’ll say, and then it’ll call Brian a Libra whether he or his birthday likes it or not. Brian doesn’t actually know or care much one way or the other, and certainly not enough to wade into an argument with TS, whose rhetorical strategies tend towards the absurd, but he does think that the serious way that Ivy listens to her TS-assigned horoscope has something to do with the way Marius has taken to asking Brian the night before whether any given storm is going to result in a snow day.

Brian himself isn’t keeping track, but according to Marius, he’s right more often than he isn’t, which, Brian supposes, is kind of gratifying. It makes him think maybe he should study meteorology. Become a weather guy. So he doesn’t try to encourage the psychic thing, but he isn’t a saint, either

“Fair enough,” Brian tells Marius, when he startles back from the orange and yellow kitten who’s been patiently waiting until Marius isn’t paying attention before trying to sniff his fingers every few minutes all afternoon.

“What?” Marius asks. He’s been trying to play off his obvious fear of cats like it’s nothing, but Brian’s not convinced, and it’s the bravado in the way he’s denying it that makes Brian want to mess with him.

“Fair enough, being wary of the cats. You know, since they’ll be your doom, and all.”


End file.
